Productive Day

I've had an alright day today. Made a start on the science assignment; I've only written about 100 words, but it gets the ball rolling. I calculated earlier, that I’m going to have to write 550 words a day, if I want to complete all of these assignments. Although, that was in the time frame of 10 days, when I actually have 16 days to do them in. And also, I can be 10% under the word limit. So taking all that into account, it’s more like 310 words a day, which is a less confidence-destroyingly staggering amount.
I also went to Uni, to sort out my e-mail account there, which was quite a fuss and fuddle, and so I could print out an e-mail, which I needed for the next part of my day...
Today has been an officially productive and all-round generally good day, because I picked up my ticket to see Biffy Clyro and Bloc Party! I was getting really anxious about this, and I’ve been putting it off for the last few days – actually, I’ve just looked back, and I wrote about this two days ago! But yeah, there was no problem at all – I went to the place, showed him the e-mail, he printed off the tickets, handed them to me, and I went on my merry way. The only problem now is getting there, but I’ll just ask someone. Also, I have a feeling my seat is a sitting down seat, on the upstairs bit stylee. Anyone who has heard Biffy or Bloc Party will know that they’re not the sort of band you’d see in concert, and want to spend the whole time sitting down.

Actually, while I’m thinking of negative things, the concert is at a bad-ish time. Only in the sense that it’s a few days after my birthday, and a few days before Tamsin arrives. Meaning that those three events, which are all huge things in my calender, are happening within a week of each other. Actually, why am I complaining? That’s gonna be one excellent week!

So a few days ago, I talked about how rude it is to pack your bags before paying in a supermarket. But today and yesterday, I noticed how BAD some Swedes are when it comes to customer service. Yesterday in the first guitar shop I went into, I had to really try to get the attention of the guy behind the counter. I’m used to people in music shops, immediately walking over to you, as soon as they see you hovering near the expensive instruments. But no one cared, when I was just walking around, clearly looking for someone to talk to. Still, that’s not terrible, I can put that down to a cultural difference. But in the other guitar shop I went into, I stood behind the counter, while the guy there just stood chatting to his mate. Not a customer, another person who worked there, just chatting away. It was really obvious I wanted their attention – why else would I be standing right in front of him, staring at him, trying to make eye contact? No, really, why would I be doing that? And then, when he stopped talking, he just sort of stood there, looking past me, then walked off! I had to wait until he came back, and just say “HEY!” to get his attention; it would have been pointless looking for eye contact again. A similar thing happened today at the University library – the guy behind the counter just having a chinwag with some woman, and still not talking to me after she had walked off, instead waiting for me to really try and get his attention. I really mean it, there was NOTHING else I could have been doing, standing behind the counter; there’s nothing there, it was student helpdesk, why else would I be standing in front of it, staring at the person behind it?

Oh well, here’s something for your amusement – a picture of a Swedish keyboard. It is different in small ways. For instance, what the hell is that above the ‘4’ key? Also notice how they place less importance on the bracket keys, but they do have separate keys for the ‘å’, ‘ä’, and ‘ö’, and a special place for the ½ symbol.